Hua Hsu - Stay True : A Memoir

A Floating Chinaman: Fantasy and Failure Across the Pacific

Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals.

Copyright 2022 by Hua Hsu

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.

www.doubleday.com

DOUBLEDAY and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

Small portions of this book have previously appeared in much different form in The New Yorker, Ddalus, Lucky Peach, and on NPR.com.

Cover photograph Anthony Chang

Cover design by Oliver Munday

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Hsu, Hua, 1977 author.

Title: Stay true : a memoir / Hua Hsu.

Description: First edition. | New York : Doubleday, [2022]

Identifiers: LCCN 2021055618 (print) | LCCN 2021055619 (ebook) | ISBN 9780385547772 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593315200 (paperback) | ISBN 9780385547789 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Hsu, Hua, 1977Childhood and youth. | Taiwanese AmericansCaliforniaSan Francisco Bay AreaBiography. | Hsu, Hua, 1977Friends and associates. | Popular cultureUnited StatesHistory20th centuryAnecdotes. | University of California, BerkeleyStudentsBiography. | Murder victimsCaliforniaBerkeleyBiography. | Taiwanese AmericansCultural assimilationAnecdotes. | Children of immigrantsCaliforniaBiography. | Coming of age.

Classification: LCC F868.S156 H78 2022 (print) | LCC F868.S156 (ebook) | DDC 979.4/67dc23/eng/20211206

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021055618

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021055619

Ebook ISBN9780385547789

ep_prh_6.0_141015460_c0_r0

For our parents

and for my friends

Only the future can provide the key to the interpretation of the past; and it is only in this sense that we can speak of an ultimate objectivity in history. It is at once the justification and the explanation of history that the past throws light on the future, and the future throws light on the past.

Edward Hallett Carr, What Is History? ( 1961 )

Because youre empty, and Im empty

And you can never quarantine the past

Pavement, Gold Soundz ( 1994 )

B ACK THEN, there was no such thing as spending too much time in the car. We would have driven anywhere so long as we were together.

I always offered my Volvo. First, it seemed like the cool, generous thing to do. Second, it ensured that everyone had to listen to my music. Nobody could cook, yet we were always piling into my station wagon for aspirational trips to the grocery store on College Avenue, the one that took about six songs to get to. We crossed the Bay Bridge simply to get ice cream, justifying a whole new mixtape. There was a twenty-four-hour Kmart down 880 that we discovered one night on the way back from giving someone a lift to the airportthe ultimate gesture of friendship. A half-hour drive just to buy notepads or underwear in the dead of night, and it was absolutely worth it. Occasionally, a stray, scratchy pop tune would catch someones attention. Whats this? Id heard these songs hundreds of times before. But to listen to them with other people: it was what Id been waiting for.

Passengers had different personalities. Some called shotgun with a neurotic intensity, as though their entire sense of self relied on sitting up front. Sammi flicked her lighter all the time, until one afternoon when the glove compartment caught on fire. Paraag always ejected my tapes and insisted on listening to the radio. Anthony, forever staring out the window. You might come no closer to touching another person than in a cramped backseat, sharing a seat belt meant for one.

I had taken my parents fear of blind spots to heart, and my head constantly bounded from side to side, checking the various mirrors, noting cars in neighboring lanes, in between sneaking glances to see if anyone else noticed that Pavement was far superior to Pearl Jam. I was responsible for my friends safety, and for their enrichment, too.

I have a photo of Ken and Suzy sitting shoulder to shoulder in the back just as were about to embark on a short road trip. Theyre chewing gum, smiling. I remember nothing about the trip except the excitement of leaving for someplace else. Finals were over, and before we went our separate ways for summer, a bunch of us spent the night at a house a few hours away from Berkeley. The fun, minor danger of driving in a caravan, as though on a secret mission, weaving through traffic, carefully looking in the rearview to see that everyone else was still behind you. Swerving from lane to lane or tailgating when we were the only cars on the road. I probably spent more time making the mixtape than it took to drive to the house and back. We wouldnt even be gone for twenty-four hours. But there was the novelty of sleeping bags, no homework, waking up in the morning somewhere unfamiliar and new, and that was enough.

In general, I wasnt used to seeing Ken in the backseat. We spent a lot of nights driving around Berkeley, his leg propped up on the passenger side door, his eyes scanning the horizon for undiscovered coffee shops, some out-of-the-way dive bar that would become our haunt once we turned twenty-one. He was always overdresseda collared shirt, a Polo jacket, things I would never wearbut maybe it was just that he was ready for adventure. More often than not, a songs drive to 7-Eleven for cigarettes.

At that age, time moves slow. Youre eager for something to happen, passing time in parking lots, hands deep in your pockets, trying to figure out where to go next. Life happened elsewhere, it was simply a matter of finding a map that led there. Or maybe, at that age, time moves fast; youre so desperate for action that you forget to remember things as they happen. A day felt like forever, a year was a geological era. The leap from sophomore to junior year of college suggested unprecedented new heights of poise and maturity. Back then, your emotions were always either very high or very low, unless you were bored, and nobody in human history had ever been this bored before. We laughed so hard we thought wed die. We drank so much we learned there was a thing called alcohol poisoning. I always feared I had alcohol poisoning. We stayed up so late, possessed by delirium, that we came up with a theory of everything, only we forgot to write it down. We cycled through legendary infatuations sure to devastate us for the rest of our lives.

For a while, you were convinced that you would one day write the saddest story ever.

I remember listening to the Fugees. I remember the chill of the air. I remember the morning after, when everyone emerged from their own corner of the house, and Ken stepped out onto the deck, holding a mug of coffee.